Look to the garden for healing power of nature

You can look up what ails you on Google, but the remedy might be found in your own garden.

According to Cindy Sauers, West Harwich artist and herbalist: By living in the world of plants, you are living in a world that is bigger, more personal, and more powerful than the internet.”

To back up that claim, Sauers cites evidence that plants have memory (they eventually stop retracting their leaves when repeatedly dropped), can hear (they emit a chemical to resist insects when recordings of those insects are played), and they know when you’re near (how else does a Morning Glory know how to reach for a wire?).

Sauers cultivates plants in her garden, called Saturday Farm, for their healing properties. Judging from the engaged audience that recently showed up at Sauer’s recent presentation at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, in Brewster, she’s not the only one interested in plants’ healing powers.

She refers to her West Harwich garden, recently featured in Country Gardens Magazine, as a healing garden, or source of natural remedies, food, and scented gifts, a sanctuary from the chaotic world without.

A former computer consultant with a corporate career, Sauers moved to her 1790 farmhouse in West Harwich in 1997, though she first began cultivating plants for their healing properties long before that.

So what makes a healing garden as opposed to just a regular garden? It must smell good, be low maintenance, peaceful, organic, and provide oils and teas that are supportive, she explained at her museum presentation.

“For me, a healing garden also has bees, butterflies, birds, squirrels, bunnies, and sheep,” said Sauers, who has two sheep, Bromley and Jobey, to mow the lawn (or pasture, as she prefers to think of it).

What isn’t a healing garden? Chemicals, pesticides, loud motors or unpleasant sounds, and too much concrete.

“I just think being around [plants] is healing,” said Sauers.

Many of the plants at Saturday Farm are native to Cape Cod, and grow wild. Native Americans were well aware of their medicinal uses, but we often consider them weeds and pull them out.

Motherwort grows wild on the Cape. Sauers grows it, and uses it to make a heart tonic, and tea.

St. John’s Wort also grows wild and is easy to find, particularly near the beach. Sauers said it’s a favorite herbal remedy, traditionally used to treat nerve pain, muscle pain, and depression related to the nervous system. She said it’s also good for burns, arthritis, restless leg syndrome and insomnia.

Because of our sandy soil, Sauers said lavender grows well on Cape Cod. There are many varieties, each with their own uses. She prefers Lavender Provence for sachets, and Betty’s Blue for bunches, because it holds its color. Other varieties are good for oils. Sauers makes her oil with lavender (it takes a lot) sunflower oil, and a few drops of vodka, and uses it as a body oil and scent.

“It’s very relaxing,” she said.

Bees like lavender, too, and it makes good honey.

The other plants in her garden are too numerous to mention. Plants like Bouncing Bet, which makes a good soap and shampoo, and butterfly weed, which was used by Native Americans as a medicine for the lungs. We use its seed floss to clean up oil spills.

Other healing plants Sauers discussed include mullein, which treats ear ailments, Solomon’s Seal, which is good for painful joints and tendons, and echinacea, said to boost the immune system.

There’s also lemon balm, which Sauers said helps you relax without making you sleepy, Dames Rockets is good in a salad, as are dandelions.

“They get a bad rap,” said Sauers. Brought over by the colonists, they are not a weed, she insisted. And they are edible. Half a cup of dandelions contain more vitamins than the average multi-vitamin pill, she said.

Dandelions are also the first flower of the season that bees look for, so don’t pull them out. Grown near tomatoes, she said they help tomatoes ripen and prevent wilting, and they’re rich in potassium, vitamin A, thiamin, riboflavin, magnesium and niacin.

Sauers even has a recipe for dandelion omelettes.

Finally there is Rosa Rugusa, or beach roses. She harvests them to make oil. “I’m getting more into my rose oil than my lavender oil, which is kind of hard to believe.”

But you don’t have to make oils or sachets, salads and shampoos to experience the healing power of a garden. Just sit on a garden bench and relax.